Introduction to the Crew Scheduling System

This system was developed to help facilitate meeting the crew calling needs of the Railroad Division of the Minnesota Transportation Museum, particularly the Osceola and St. Croix Valley Railway. In addition to crew calling and self-signup, the system provides for the generation and tracking of Hours of Service forms to meet FRA 228 requirements and in accordance with Federal law. It also provides useful administrative information on volunteer hours worked and volunteer activities.

Access to the system is controlled by first name, last name, and a password. You may also choose to define a nickname to use instead of your first name and last name for greater convenience. Any crew member, and any number of crew members, can be designated as administrators of the system. Administrators are able to add, cancel, and modify trips, as well as change scheduling for other members. Administrators are also the only members who can change the qualification status for anyone.

The system is intended to be self-documenting and intuitive to use, but "self-documenting" and "intuitive" are in the eye of the beholder, so never hesitate to ask for information or clarification.

The design includes the provision for you to maintain your own contact information, and it is expected that you will do so, though an administrator can make the changes for you. When your e-mail or phone numbers change, please use the "Change your password, e-mail address, phone numbers, or display and notification options" link to enter the correct information. You can pick other options from this sectoin, as well, such as e-mail notification of events for which you are scheduled to work.

In that same section, you will find options to change your password and control some display formats to match your personal preferences. You will also find options to control if and how the system should send automatic reminders to you for your Hours of Service reporting requirement, and whether you wish to be automatically notified of changes to your schedule made by system administrators.

The system will allow you to see the scheduled shifts, and who is already signed up to operate on those shifts. It provides two different ways for you to sign up - either by looking at a portion of the schedule and checking off times you'd like to work, or a "quick signup" option that shows you required positions in the schedule for which you are qualified and giving you quick access to fill one of those spots. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. You may prefer one over the other, or you may find yourself using both, depending on how many spots you are looking to fill and whether you want to know before you sign up who you will be working with. Either way you choose, the system will show you who else is on the crew for that day after you have completed the signup.

One feature that has caused some confusion in signing up by looking at a portion of the schedule is that when you go to the page where you can sign up, your name "disappears" from places on the schedule where you are already signed up. This is because the system puts a "checkbox" in each position that the you are qualified to fill. The checkbox in the position for which you are already on the schedule is checked. To sign up for a position, you need only check the appropriate box and click the "signup" button. You may sign up for a different position instead, automatically cancelling the other position, by checking the box for that position. If you wish to cancel out of a shift, uncheck all the boxes.

You may or may not belong to one or more Teams. Teams consist of a group of members that enjoy working together and who want to work as a part of that team on a regular basis. Team members can commit the entire team to trips on the schedule. Team members can also assign themselves and other team members to the particular jobs within the trips that they have committed to take. Even if you are a part of a Team, you may still sign up for activities individually.

The system also provides mailing list capabilities. There are two lists likely to be of general interest, oscv-crew@crewsched.trainride.org and oscv-all@crewsched.trainride.org. oscv-crew relays the message to active members who are currently qualified as brakeman or above. oscv-all relays the message to all members who have e-mail addresses and are not resigned or deceased.

Due to unwanted e-mails being sent out through the mailing lists, two restrictions have been added to the acceptance of e-mails to the lists.

  1. The originating e-mail address must be an e-mail address that is in use by a user of the scheduling system. If you have multiple e-mail addresses, and would want to post to the list from a different e-mail address than the one known to the system, you will not be able to do so.
  2. There is a flag which can be set for each user to revoke their privilege for sending through the mailing list manager. If their sending privilege is revoked, they will still receive messages from the mailing list as appropriate prior to the change. The impacted user and all system administrators are notified in the event of such revocation.

All administrators reserve the right to use the mailing list revocation in the event of intentional misuse, or inappropriate messages due to a computer virus, worm, or trojan horse. Once revoked, sending privileges can be restored when the problem is addressed.

To begin using the system, log in.